The Tapestry of Loss
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPDM oneshot. After Harry and Draco confiscate a tapestry as part of an Auror investigation, Harry starts to notice that something is not quite right with Draco. Very fluffy. Complete.


**Title: **The Tapestry of Loss

**Disclaimer: **J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

**Pairings: **Harry/Draco

**Rating: **R

**Word Count: **~5000

**Warnings: **Profanity, bit of angst, bit of sex

**Challenge: **for nevcolleil

_Keywords: _marks, sunshine, tapestry

_Dialogue: _"I mean, honestly... If you hadn't wanted me to put it in my mouth, you might have said something."

**Summary: **After Harry and Draco discover a mysterious tapestry as part of an Auror investigation, Harry starts noticing that the effects on Draco are…not quite good.

**Author's Notes: **This is a response to a challenge nevcolleil submitted to hd_500 in February.

**The Tapestry of Loss**

"Draco! Not that way!"

"Fuck you, Harry, it is too!"

Harry ducked a green line of light that nearly decapitated him, and then popped up and fired a Stunner at the smuggler who'd tried to hurt him. The man stiffened and fell over. Then Harry dived behind a chair as a Cutting Curse nearly opened his throat. "No, it isn't!" he yelled, which he knew would negate the effect of his hiding, but at the moment he didn't really care. "You _can't _use the Freezing Charm that way, Draco, because if you do—"

A sound of desperately scrambling feet and a loud crash answered him.

"You'll fall yourself," Harry finished with a sigh, and rolled out from behind the chair in order to stand up and survey the room.

It was the ground floor of what had once been an impressive manor house, at least before the pure-blood owners had been forced to sell the building after the war. The manor had passed through several hands, more and more rapidly, until at last it had landed back in the hands of its disguised first owners. The Bonneville family had made themselves part of a smuggling ring that stole Dark magical artifacts by that time, or perhaps they could have gone on living in their old home in peace.

Now, half the floor had been Transfigured to extraordinarily slippery ice, and the remnants of the smuggling ring lay about groaning—but so did Draco. Harry rolled his eyes. Draco thought that the physical laws of the world should just exempt him from consequences when he used a spell like this.

"What did I tell you?" Harry asked rhetorically, Body-Binding the wizards and witches who were trying to aim their wands at Draco.

"And why should I have to listen to you?" Draco turned to look at him with a sneer reminiscent of the time they had started their partnership and hadn't yet managed to find any camaraderie. Of course, _that _had become easier after they spent a night hanging off a tower by a few fingers each, taking it in turn to cast spells that would strengthen their hands and keep them warm. Draco was the only one who knew what it was like to stare at the flagstones five hundred feet beneath them for ten hours, and the only one who really _understood _why Harry had been a little queasy about heights from that time on.

Harry was prepared to tolerate his mistakes, but he _did _wish Draco listened to him more often, because he was usually right—about spells, anyway. Draco could be right about fashion and wizarding novels and pure-blood traditions and the consequences of drinking, and together they made a balance.

Draco's elbow slid out from beneath him at that moment; the ice had been designed to frustrate any attempt to rise from it. Harry sighed. "I should leave you there, really I should," he mused aloud.

"You won't do that," Draco said, his voice muffled since he hadn't bothered to raise his face from the ice. "You care too much about me."

Harry took the moment to give the bowed head a warm smile; none of the smugglers were in any condition to comment on it. Yes, he _did _care about Draco, and slowly they were moving closer to each other, in an immense spiral that seemed composed of contempt, arguments, competition, shared experiences, inside jokes, and some tense, tentative flirting. Harry thought they would probably be dating someday, and he could accept that with happy patience.

But that didn't mean he needed to _indulge _Draco when he was so clearly _wrong._

He levitated his partner to his feet and then jerked his head at the smugglers. "Ready to take them back to the Ministry?"

Draco tossed him a horrified look, dropping his jaw and widening his eyes, as if Harry had managed to blaspheme his personal gods. Of course, in a way, Harry had, and he had caused the reaction on purpose, but he was not going to admit _that_, either. "Without looking at their goods?"

"We can leave that up to the people whose job it really is," Harry said piously. "You know, the ones who catalogue Dark artifacts?"

"We'll see what they have first," Draco said. "You never know." He turned resolutely towards the stairs that led up to the first floor of the manor house.

Harry grinned at his back again. Draco's greed and sarcasm could be rather amusing when it wasn't directed at him. And since Harry had given him friendship and begun gently flirting with him, Draco _did _seem less selfish in general.

It made Harry wonder what would happen if they had become friends as children…

But he had long since forbidden himself to regret the past, so he forced himself to shrug now and wait patiently for the moment when Draco slipped again, since he was still walking on the ice.

"It's _not _funny," Draco said a moment later, as Harry laughed at the sight of his arse sticking straight up in the air.

*

"Look at this, Harry!"

Draco was scampering through the treasure room like a child, he knew, but that was because the objects around them were _interesting. _

Golden cups that could turn any liquid put into them to poison! Emerald statues of snakes with closed ruby eyes that would open those eyes and cut holes through the body of any intruder! Cursed iron bracelets that would bring death and destruction down on anyone who stole them! An urn covered with swirling, hypnotic patterns of golden wolves that started to revolve and rise towards the surface, snarling, when Draco looked at them without blinking!

And Harry followed him with his wand warily in hand, jerking his head towards the urn when the wolves snarled, and hissing in warning when one of the emerald snakes moved, because objects didn't _matter _to him.

Draco had never understood that. Yes, he knew that one didn't technically need silken sheets and roast quail every day. But if you could afford them, why wouldn't you have them? And if you could have beautiful, magical objects like these around you, why wouldn't you have them?

Sometimes he wondered if Harry was scowling at his back in contempt when he wandered around hoards of artifacts like this. But he didn't think he could give it up, and anyway, he told himself, Harry mostly thought of him as an equal.

_Mostly._

He put aside a bronze shield with strange marks around the center—the marks looked like the tracks birds would leave in snow, which didn't strike Draco as enthralling—and found himself facing the far wall of the room. For a moment, Draco felt disappointment. He hadn't expected the smugglers' hoard to be so small.

But then he realized that the best treasure of all hung here. And no one could say that the smugglers didn't know how to treat their loot.

It was a tapestry. It shimmered green and golden, subtle patterns appearing and then vanishing again, so that sometimes Draco thought it was a forest scene in sunshine and sometimes an ocean on a brilliant day and sometimes a depiction of a giant emerald set in a golden ring. But each time his eyes discovered a twist or curve that made sense, it faded. Draco knew nothing of the tapestry that was true after five minutes of staring, except its beauty.

And then, the real form appeared.

Draco leaned towards the tapestry, his breath quickening. He could see lines springing into being, coiling around each other like the branches of a tree. They grew thicker quickly, and words sprouted from them and hung like leaves, and light like sap surged through them.

There, before him, was a depiction of the Malfoy family line, as Draco had often seen it on books and the tapestries his own family possessed.

Draco reached out with a shaking hand to touch the surface of the tapestry. The cloth brushed against his fingers, so exquisite a weaving that he wanted to shake again with sheer respect for its beauty.

_This must be something that was stolen from my family a long time ago, _he thought, moving closer to it. _Or maybe Father was too embarrassed to mention that he lost it. _

He could see the words now.

And he paused.

Because the words on the tapestry recorded death and destruction, disappointment and loss, and they flared the brighter and the larger as his eyes ran across them, as if the tapestry could tell where he was looking at any particular moment.

There was Apollonius Malfoy, whom Draco had never heard of except as someone who had died young and disappointed his father. Now, from the tapestry, he learned that Apollonius had tried to Transfigure himself into a plant. Draco wanted to snort aloud with despair. That was _only_ for Transfiguration masters! Only for people who were sixty years old at least, and Draco could see from the date that Apollonius had only been twenty when he died.

Draco could also see why the Malfoys hadn't wanted to remember him.

He leaned closer still, gazing now at a name he didn't recognize at all, though it was only two generations before his father. Ianthe Malfoy had been the sister of Lucius's grandfather, it looked like, and she had turned into a prostitute, selling herself and her heritage for money. Oh, said the writing, she had called herself a "courtesan," but still, the shame had been too much for her family to take, and they had burned their name off their own tapestry.

And there was Quintus Malfoy of five generations ago, who had been—a cannibal?

Draco shuddered with disgust.

"Draco, are you all right? You haven't extolled the virtues of any of these artifacts in ten minutes."

_Harry._ Harry was right behind him.

And if he came closer, he would see the lines on the tapestry, and the words, and the truth about Draco's family, that it wasn't grand and regal after all, but full of crawling, petty darkness and terrible sins—

Draco didn't care about what most people thought of him, but Harry was an exception, ever since the night on the tower. He turned around, putting his back to the tapestry, carefully arranging his body so that, at the very least, he was covering up Ianthe and Quintus Malfoy.

"It's nothing," he said. "It's pretty, I think, but the magic's faded."

To his relief, Harry gave the tapestry a single, uninterested glance, nodded, and turned away. "Well, then, I reckon we should start cataloguing these artifacts and moving them back to the Ministry."

His voice reflected a distinct lack of enthusiasm, and Draco seized the opportunity. "Why don't you take the smugglers back to the Ministry? I can catalogue and move these."

Harry gave him a faintly suspicious glance. "You're sure?" He knew Draco liked to be seen coming in with the criminals, to reinforce his reputation as an Auror who actually _did _hunt down Dark wizards instead of letting them go.

Draco nodded fiercely. "Positive."

"All right." Harry leaned towards him until their lips nearly touched, and suddenly Draco was thinking about something other than the tapestry for an instant. "As long as you're not taking the chance to sneak out with some other man, Draco Malfoy."

Draco caught his breath as he met Harry's glance. "And you really think that you have the right to control me?" He turned his head to the side and fluttered his eyelashes.

"Not so much control," Harry whispered, "as the chance to know you. I don't intend to let someone else find out all your secrets first." For a moment, his fingers hooked into Draco's robes as if they would delve under and find skin.

"That'll never happen," Draco breathed back. "Not when I'm keeping some of those secrets _just _for you."

Harry grinned at him and stepped back, then trotted down the stairs to pick up the smugglers.

Draco at once faced the tapestry and waved his wand. It uncoiled neatly from the wall and into a roll of cloth. Draco tapped the roll with his wand to send it away to Malfoy Manor.

He told himself there was no need to feel guilty. After all, the tapestry had been stolen from his family, and they were only reclaiming it. And if he _did _take it to the Ministry, the same thing would happen in the end, but only after endless leaps through paperwork and suspicious undersecretaries who still resented Draco's parents for the part they had played in the war.

_It's just easier this way, _he told himself, and then began to gather up the other artifacts, although with his mind only half on the work.

*

"Where's Malfoy?"

"Hmmm?" Harry glanced up from the file he was studying. The Head Auror had assigned him a new case, one he would probably have to investigate alone because it called for work in the Muggle world and Draco could _never _fit in there, or stop making loud remarks about magic. He'd been so involved in his reading that he hadn't even heard Ron arrive at the office door.

"Malfoy," Ron repeated, tapping a sheaf of parchment against his arm and looking agitated. "I have to get him to counter-sign on this report, and I can't _find _the git."

Harry snorted softly. His growing friendship and flirtation with Draco hadn't affected Draco and Ron's antagonistic relationship at all, except to move it from open violence to muttered insults. Come to think of it, Harry reckoned that was a fairly extreme sacrifice for both of them to make.

"I don't know. You remember that he comes in late sometimes, when he's been attending another of Parkinson's parties." Harry turned a page of the file and told himself that he was _not _jealous that Draco never took Harry as his date to one of those parties. So far as he knew, Draco never took anyone else, either, and anyway, those parties were full of his particular friends. Harry didn't think he'd have a good time at them, especially since he'd have to look the other way half the evening to avoid making arrests.

"Well, if you see him, tell him _I _don't want to see him, but I _have_ to." Ron stomped off, looking martyred.

Harry returned to reading, and then went to the Confiscation Stores to requisition some tracking devices he'd need, and then went to lunch, and then practiced some of the spells he'd need in the dueling rooms, and then went to play with Teddy; it was his day to rescue Andromeda from the activities of a rambunctious six-year-old Metamorphmagus for a while.

It was only as he was going home that he realized Draco had never come in that day at all.

*

Draco crouched before the tapestry, drinking in the darkness that had haunted his family, running his finger from line to line and sibling bonds to marriage and parental bonds. Each time, the tapestry obligingly glowed and swirled, so that he could read the latest murder, or betrayal, or petty crime.

These weren't even crimes of which one could be _proud_, that was the horrible thing. There had been no Dark Lords in his family. There had been murders for sheer gain, for a few more Galleons or for possession of a steel mirror that Lesbia Malfoy had wanted desperately for some reason, although she was rich enough to buy a hundred more just like it. There was incest, and cannibalism, and infanticide. There was rape. There was the truth about the dispute with the Weasleys, which nearly made Draco rend the tapestry in half.

What stopped him was the still beauty of it, and the fact that he knew _it_ wasn't to blame. It was merely the reflection of history. If the Malfoy family wanted a better reflection, they should have done better things.

Draco had become an Auror partially because he wanted others to understand that Aurors were not always from the "Light" families, and because he thought too many people were forgetting the distinction between good and evil in the post-war trials. What was good and evil was what you did, not just family reputation. The Malfoys could be "good" if they wanted. Hadn't his father donated money to all sorts of charitable causes? Hadn't his mother saved the Savior's life?

And he had wanted, too, to do something positive, rather than merely continue the vacillating neutrality that had ruled most of his efforts in the war. He hadn't been able to make up his mind, so he hadn't been able to choose a side.

_Well, at the very least, no one can doubt my decision now._

But against the weight of the past that the tapestry carried, with so many negative and spiteful and self-defeating decisions, Draco had to wonder if his one small choice mattered at all.

He hadn't yet dared to look at what the tapestry said about the latest generations, about his parents and about _him_. So far, he had kept to the sunlight-flecked corners that were farthest away when he could, and had stopped himself from looking past Abraxas Malfoy when his eyes and fingers wandered in that direction.

But he knew it was only a matter of time before he arrived there.

*

Harry knocked on the doors of Malfoy Manor, frowning. He knew that Draco sometimes went into sulking fits and took time off from work, but it had never been for three days before. And Harry couldn't think what would have sent him into such a fit, anyway. He had looked perfectly normal when they parted at Bonneville Manor. Maybe someone in the Artifact Collection Office had said something to upset him?

_He does get easily upset, _Harry thought, with faint exasperation. _He has to know that people are going to make comments on his family sometimes. _

But six years after the war, when Draco had spent two years as a full-fledged Auror with no bad marks on his record, Harry could understand why he got upset. He didn't want to be defined by his past alone, any more than Harry wanted to be recognized only as the Chosen One, but it seemed they both would be.

Upset enough to take three days off work, though? Harry wanted to know who had said that thing, and what it was, so that he could punish his partner's bully properly.

A house-elf answered at last, after long moments of knocking. It squeaked in surprise to see Harry and bowed. "Master Harry Potter is forgiving Elsie," it said. "Elsie did not know he was knocking."

Harry nodded. "That's all right, Elsie. Is Draco home?"

Elsie cast an anxious glance over her shoulder into the house, as if she expected to see Draco running up behind her, and then lowered her voice. "Master Draco is being sick."

_Well, that would explain why he wasn't at work, at least, _Harry thought, consoled. "What kind of sickness?" he asked briskly. "Does he need me to fetch a Healer from St. Mungo's?"

Elsie shook her head so hard that her ears flopped into her eyes. "I is not understanding," she whispered miserably. "Master Draco is staying in one room all day, and is not eating, and—"

Harry narrowed his eyes in concern. It was possible that Draco had been contaminated by Dark magic from one of the artifacts he'd handled. For the sake of Draco's reputation as an Auror—and for many other reasons, such as Harry's being on his way to falling in love with him—he thought he should investigate.

"Can I come in, Elsie?" he asked, and gave his most charming smile, the one that made Winky scramble to prepare his favorite breakfast when she came to visit Kreacher. "Maybe I can do something."

Elsie beamed and stood aside.

*

_Incest, even, I could understand if it was some tale of grand passion. _Draco shivered as he crouched on the floor and traced one finger over the lower left-hand corner of the tapestry. The part of the tree that bore his name and his parents' was directly opposite. He was creeping slowly towards it now, no longer able to admit to his cowardice by putting it off. _But because of lust, not love? Why can't my ancestors be as grand as I always thought them?_

He had contemplated asking Lucius and Narcissa about their family and why they had told him lies, in some cases, and cleaned-up versions of the stories, in others, but he didn't think he should do that until he saw what the tapestry had to tell him about his parents. He needed knowledge of their secrets in order to show them he couldn't be lied to any longer. Trembling, he focused his eyes on the lower right-hand corner of the tapestry.

And yet, despite his commitment and his courage, his gaze landed on his name instead of Lucius's or Narcissa's.

_Draco Malfoy, _said the tapestry in black letters that stood out like stains against the scintillating green-golden background of the cloth. _Considers himself good at Quidditch, and wasn't. Tortured people because of his own refusal to stand up against the commands of the Dark Lord. Flirting with Harry Potter to pass the time, and planning to break his heart when Potter is thoroughly enchanted with him._

Draco caught his breath. That wasn't—

The first wasn't a crime, at least, he carefully reasoned. But the other two? Was weakness the only reason he hadn't cast down his wand when the Dark Lord ordered him to subject failed Death Eaters to the Cruciatus?

And Harry? He had thought that he really meant to have a loving relationship with Harry, as soon as he had convinced Harry that he was a competent Auror, strong, brave, and good at other things besides torture. He knew that any bond between them couldn't depend on looks or the tension that had always remained between them since their schooldays; it had to be based on Harry's admiration and respect for the qualities of his soul.

But when he tried to remember his own intentions clearly, they swam in a green-golden haze, and he began to wonder.

_I thought I was doing that. But what if I wasn't? I had hidden motivations before, when I told myself I hated Harry all through school, and yet later I acknowledged that I wanted his attention._

_Is this another case? _

His eyes roamed feverishly over the long list of beloved names that had become no more than a tarnished list of sinners and criminals.

_The tapestry knows the truth. It must know the truth in this case. I can't—I can't—_

Draco felt his body shaking, but as if from a distance. The green and gold in his vision swirled and expanded. He knew he was lifting his wand, but he didn't know what he was going to do with it. Destroy the tapestry? Blast away the condemning words that had grown longer and brighter as he watched? Read the rest of his crimes, some of which he didn't remember but knew were true?

From behind him came the sound of an opening door, but that, too, was in another world.

*

Harry stepped into the small study that Draco had chosen to barricade himself in—he'd used a locking spell, but Harry was an Auror, too—and saw Draco crouching before what looked like an unfocused ward, holding his wand against his temple.

Harry leaped from where he stood, crashing into Draco and knocking his wand aside. Draco fell on the floor with a sudden, hopeless cry. His hawthorn wand rolled towards a corner and Draco groped after it, but Harry Summoned it to him and stuck it in the back pocket of his robe.

Then he turned to the thing hanging on the wall, which vibrated with ripples of Dark magic that almost nauseated Harry. Since Voldemort, he seemed to have become more sensitive to _individual _pieces of Dark magic; an accumulation of artifacts like the one in the smugglers' treasure room or curses in a battle didn't bother him, but a single artifact or spell could make him sick.

"_Concremo!_" he shouted, and the thing burst into flames that ate greedily at every corner and every fiber. Harry saw a forest-green haze rise from it, struggling as if it meant to escape. He cast a spell that, employed properly, would destroy malevolent ghosts or spirits that had tried to possess the living, and had the satisfaction of seeing the thing burst apart into four puffs of dust as if drawn and quartered.

Then he turned and knelt over Draco.

Draco's eyes fluttered as he came back to himself. He had a green tinge to his face and a hollowness to his cheeks that made Harry think he hadn't eaten in a few days. He glared at the wall, wishing he could have done something even more violent to the Dark artifact, but the _Concremo _spell had done its work and completely eradicated its target—and only its target. The wall didn't even have a burned spot.

"Harry?" Draco whispered. "I learned—I learned awful things about myself—" And then he frowned and touched a hand to his head. "At least, I thought I did. And about my family. But now I can't remember why I believed them."

"That _thing_ convinced you, I think," Harry said, and slung an arm behind Draco's shoulders to help him sit up. He seemed to be recovering rapidly, at least. He only looked confused, not dazed. "It must have interacted with your mind."

"It was a tapestry," Draco whispered, looking haunted. "A Malfoy family tapestry."

"It wasn't," Harry said. "That is, I think it was a tapestry, but I couldn't see any Malfoy family line on it."

Draco looked skeptically at him. "And since when have _you _seen a pure-blood family tapestry?"

"Oh," Harry drawled, "there's only the one from the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black that hangs in my home. The one with your name and your mother's and your father's on it."

Draco had the grace to blush. "So you think the tapestry made that up?" he murmured. "It didn't portray my family line at all?"

Harry shook his head. "It interacted with your mind and produced what you most feared to see. The smugglers we questioned did admit that they had a few artifacts like that, but we thought we'd catalogued and neutralized them all." He tapped a finger on Draco's shoulder, his relief giving way to anger. "I didn't know that _someone _had taken one home."

Draco pouted at him. "I was ensorcelled! And not in my right mind! You can't blame me."

"Certainly not when you look like that," Harry whispered.

He didn't mean Draco to hear that, but his sly smile proved he had. Then he reached out and took Harry's hand in his, tracing his fingers over Harry's palm in a way that made his breath catch. "You saved my life," he said. "Again. I don't know what we're going to do about repaying all the life-debts, at this rate."

"It hasn't been a matter of repayment between us for a long time," Harry answered quietly. "I've considered us equal since at least that night on the tower."

Draco looked at him with a face that had a blaze like a comet's imprinted on it, and Harry cursed himself for not saying that earlier. Only now did he realize that Draco might _not _have thought of himself as equal with Harry, thanks to the taunts about his family that he regularly received in the Department and what had happened during the war. Harry had thought he'd made it clear enough with the way that he accepted Draco as his partner, but there were some people who needed the words.

_And some who have to show their appreciation in other ways, _he realized, as Draco moved Harry's hand to his mouth and began to suck on Harry's finger.

Harry stared, as entranced as Draco had been before the tapestry, whilst Draco's tongue worked up and down his finger and traced around the nail and the knuckle in intricate swirls. Then he felt the response from his groin and yanked his finger out hard enough to bump two of Draco's teeth.

Draco ducked his head, his eyes brilliant, even as he felt at his mouth with an air of injured dignity. "I mean, honestly..." he said, when he appeared satisfied that there was no actual damage. "If you hadn't wanted me to put it in my mouth, you might have said something."

Harry leaned forwards to kiss him. Draco grasped his shoulders in response, and Harry discovered that having Draco's tongue twine around his felt even better than feeling it twine around his finger.

"So," Harry said, sitting back on his heels, when he finally felt able to pull away and not gratify Draco's silent request for more kisses. "Here's the plan. We reassure your parents that you're still alive, explain your absence to the Auror Department, and then go back to my house and shag."

"No," Draco said. "I have a better plan. I get something to eat and we reassure my parents that I'm still alive by the extreme noise of our fucking."

"That doesn't take care of the Auror Department," Harry said, trying to comprehend how in the world it had happened that he was sitting on the floor of a dusty study in Malfoy Manor discussing the progression of their fucking with his partner.

"Hmmm." Draco tilted his head. "I agree." He brightened. "On the second try, then, when we know each other's needs better, we can make each other scream loud enough to alert the Ministry that we're fine, too."

Harry kissed him again, because it was something, to know that not even almost dying as the result of a Dark artifact's enchantment could dim Draco's spirit.

_As it happens, _he thought, feeling Draco's erection just then, _we might not get out of the study for our first time. _

And as it happened, they didn't.

But Harry thought it was worth it, even if he did have to listen to Draco's complaints about having to pick splinters out of his back for a week.

**End.**


End file.
